He's not right. He's Sven — present, ambient, watching everything without appearing to — but the concussion is in how he carries himself in a way he can't fully hide. His footsteps are slightly more deliberate than usual. He's navigating the corridor with a fraction more care than he normally would. He knows I'm watching. He doesn't acknowledge it.
He got knocked out by a feral wolf for me. He's walking me to medical at nine in the morning on a concussion and he's doing it with the same economy he brings to everything, like it's simply the next task.
I don't say anything.
The medical bay. The same doctor who assessed me the morning I shifted — thorough, quick, no questions that aren't medically relevant. She presses along my ribs and I breathe carefully and she tells me two are cracked, gives me a brace, tells me it will heal quickly and runs through instructions I absorb maybe half of.
Sven waits by the door the whole time. When the doctor steps out to get something, the room is just the two of us.
"Are you okay," I say.
"I've had worse."
"That's not what I asked."
A pause. He moves from the door to the chair beside the exam table and sits down, which is the most I've seen him concede to the concussion all day.
"I'm fine," he says. Then, before I can respond: "The report goes in tonight."
I don't say anything. I wait.
"What it contains," he says, "is that the incident occurred. That I was injured. That standard protocol was followed in response." He says it evenly. The language of a man reading from adocument he's already written in his head. "What the trigger sequence was. What led to the escalation." A pause. "That's not in the report."
I look at him.
"The trigger sequence is what they'd use," he says. "For permanent classification. Without it, the grounds aren't there. It becomes a serious incident. Serious incidents have review processes. Review processes have outcomes that aren't permanent." He holds my gaze. "With it — it's a pattern. Patterns don't get review processes."
"Sven—"
"I was there," he says. Flat. Final. "He didn't know what he was doing. My report reflects what I witnessed."
The room is very quiet.
I think about what Dalton said — irreversible. I think about RJ in secure holding somewhere in this building sayingsorry, sorryinto my shoulder. I think about Sven on the floor with blood at his hairline being carried out while I stood in the wreckage and couldn't do anything.
"What does it cost you," I say.
He looks at the wall. "Professional review." A pause. "If they find nothing, then I’m fine."
"Sven."
"It's not your concern."
"It is my concern."
He looks back at me. "The alternative," he says, "was a report I couldn't file in good conscience. That's all."
His jaw moves slightly — not opening, more like a door unlocking without swinging wide.
"Gavin asked me," he says, "whether your presence contributed to the incident."
I go still.
"Whether the bond-adjacent connection between you and RJ was a destabilizing factor. Whether you should be considered a contributing cause." His voice stays flat. "It's a reasonable institutional question. If the answer was yes, it would count toward your incident threshold."
One incident. Transport van.
"What did you say," I say.
